


Warrior

by deslea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fic, Quidditch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 04:56:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6891097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deslea/pseuds/deslea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Challenge fic for the prompt "7th year at Hogwarts, Lucius is Molly's dirty little secret." What happened at Quidditch, stayed at Quidditch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warrior

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MyWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyWitch/gifts).



Lucius was her dirty little secret, and she was his.

Molly thought this as she watched him across the stands. He was cheering on his son, his wife at his side. They were both blonde and languid and haughty. They could have been twins, two halves of a soul born of a single womb. Just like her and Arthur.

She and Lucius were kindred spirits. Both had craved and sought their mirror image. Both had darker cravings, slow and molten, for that which they despised. They hadn't touched one another in decades, but now and then their eyes would lock, as they did now.

He raised a single eyebrow, a slow, satisfied smirk rising on his features, and cast a pointed look downward to the ground beneath them, where it had all began. She rolled her eyes, gave her best _heaven-help-me_ expression. He shrugged without rancour and returned his attention to the game.

That was the difference between them, she thought. He was amoral, and his foibles were just another part of him, to be accepted, humoured, and sometimes laughed at. She was not, and hers troubled her.

But now and then, she would remember the blood lust and the heat and the white-hot fury of him inside her, and she would wonder whether this life she'd chosen was who she really was after all.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Their roll in the hay started out as a roll on the Quidditch field, tumbling together in pursuit of the Snitch during practice. 

The Snitch had eluded them both, but it hovered just long enough for them to both lurch forward, brooms poised side by side, and crash through the canvas façade of the empty spectator stands. They tumbled to a halt in a tangle of limbs, her body astride his.

Their eyes met, gleaming. They couldn't be more different, but they were unified by shared purpose, by the rhythms of the game, by the parry and thrust of their bodies in duel. It was a shared language that temporarily swept all other barriers away. They were both hyped up on adrenaline, both hot and sweating, both horny as hell. He was rock-hard against her, and the knowledge of that was like smelling his blood.

She ground down on him relentlessly, a knowing smile curling around her lips. "My, my, Lucius, do you really mean to tell me you want a filthy Mudblood-loving-"

 _"Yes,"_ he hissed, silken voice dragging over the surface of her mind, fingers curling hard around her thighs. His hips jerked against her, and that was the tipping point from taunting to wanting. Three rough moves and he was inside her; half a dozen hard thrusts and they both were done. 

They returned to the game with no one the wiser.

What happened at Quidditch stayed at Quidditch, she told herself, but when Arthur touched her later, simple and fond in a room that was clean and bright, she didn't feel like she belonged there. And she wished, just for a moment, that she was somewhere darker and damper, somewhere where the air was heavy and humid and sour. Somewhere with _him._

  
  


* * *

  
  


They'd tried it once off the field, and it hadn't gone well. It turned out that their chemistry, while impressive, was strictly a product of the competition. Off the field, the low-grade telepathy was gone, his mastery was just arrogance, and his ruthlessness revolted her.

After that, they stuck to shagging in the stands after practice (and, occasionally, a quickie during). Conversation was minimal and mostly fruitless. She loved his cock, liked his body, and despised his mind, and feeling was heartily mutual.

When Arthur asked her to marry him, she left Quidditch without a backward glance. It wasn't just to get away from Lucius, although that was part of it. It was to get away from that unwanted part of herself, the part that lusted for blood and anger. The part that took her revulsion for him and turned it into something _hot._ It was a part of her, she thought, that could not be allowed to gain a purchase on her life. She had chosen goodness and light, and if that part of her had to be wrestled into submission for it, then so be it.

Lucius, for his part, had dutifully married Narcissa, and from what Molly could tell from a distance, he had grown to love her. No doubt Narcissa would be furious if she ever knew about them, and to that extent at least, Molly had become Lucius' dirty little secret, just as surely as he was hers. But Lucius, she sensed, had never felt the shame that Molly did, the vague feeling that she had compromised something about her own identity. Lucius did not trouble himself with such concerns. He had a self-acceptance that she both reviled and envied.

She had known that choosing what was right was the harder path, and accepted it. But she hadn't known, until Lucius, that it meant denying a part of herself.

And now, a tiny, buried part of her would always wonder who she would have been if she hadn't.

  
  


* * *

  
  


It was five years and a great war later before she spoke to him again.

She was jittery after the final battle, high on the adrenaline rush of her duel with Bellatrix and the defence of her children. She hadn't even begun to really accept that Fred was gone forever. There would be a terrible crash for that, and soon. It was the calm before the storm, and she knew it.

But for now, she was hyped up, revelling in blood and victory, and riding the pleasure of it for all it was worth. She was vaguely ashamed of it, as though she wasn't honouring Fred's memory enough by savouring the sensations in her body, but she supposed she would shed more than enough tears to atone for it later.

She looked around quickly when Lucius approached, but her family were scattered in all directions. Good.

"So, you killed Bellatrix," he said conversationally, dropping down beside her. 

"Yes, I did. What do you want, an apology?" she asked, but without rancour. Lucius had never been all that fond of his sister-in-law, and he had defected from his warlord in the end. She didn't believe he was here to start a fight.

"Hardly," he said. "I wouldn't have expected anything less. Underneath it all, you always were a warrior."

She stared at him. "Is that really how you saw me?"

Lucius shrugged. "Raising that enormous brood of children was just what you _did,_ Molly. The warrior is who you are. It always was."

It dawned on her that he was _proud_ of her. That that was why he came over here. To tell her so.

"I thought you _despised_ me," she sputtered. "I thought that was why you were with me."

That old, sardonic smirk lit on his features. "No, that's why _you_ were with _me_. I was with _you_ because I liked you. Even if you didn't like yourself."

She was floored. Stunned by how well Lucius - narcissistic, self-involved Lucius - had understood her. She felt embarrassed, like she had misjudged him, and wondered if she had always misjudged him. If what she had really despised was the warrior inside herself.

But in the end, the warrior had saved her daughter.

"I like you, Lucius," she said at last. "I like you just fine."

"Liar," he said, but he said it in good humour. He got to his feet. "Be well, Molly."

"You too," she said, her voice soft and amazed, as she realised that a wound inside her had closed.

She was coming down off the high, she knew. The hammering jitters in her body were falling away, and terrible, crashing loss was starting to seep into the edges of her mind.

She was a mother who grieved, but she was also a warrior who prevailed, and at last, she could embrace them both. 

And with the help of both of them, she would endure.

END


End file.
